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Salient. Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 41 No. 6. April 3 1978
Struggling to be Serious
Struggling to be Serious
Dear typstr.,
This is in answer to your reply in a copy of "Salient" to a letter by one Vic Urwin. Unfortunately (in consequence) it's going to be a tremendously boring letter. Sorry to my fellow loonies, please forgive me this slight moment of sanity. I hate to be so serial, but well, you know. . . . C'est la vie.
Well Mr. typstr., Sir, let's get down to basics . . . You're crazy.
To trivialise the subject of Abortion (aghh . . . I dared to mention the word without being insulted, must be a quiet day) is typical of people unable to accept a straight-forward argument, let alone compose one.
Surely even you can see the difference between between Life inasmuch as the terms 'Foetus' and 'Sperm' are concerned? The former is alive (organically) and 'it' is also a 'result' of a fusion of two separate human being's genetical 'blueprints', whereas the latter is merely one of these 'genetical blueprints' as yet ununited with the 'other, half'. Hence it is Not a Human Being, whereas the Foetus is. Why is the Foetus a Human Being? Shit you Still can't see why?
Simple .... xx+xy = Human Being. Genetical Fact. You doubt it? O.K. . . ignore fact, see if I care. So what if it's two days, two weeks, two months, two years or two score years old? It's still xx and xy=Human Being. Fact. You want to also disbelieve that the Earth rotates about the Sun? Want to defy the Laws of Gravity without mechanical/artificial means? Want to pronounce to the world that you can prove that 2+3=2? If so, you're more weird than me (and that takes something).
Oh shit . . . you'll never listen to the facts anyway, so why should I waste my time on you soddy pimple-pickers.
Yours in a close encounter
JJ. Sertyzetenitz
(really) and a negative psyche too.(Even SPUC, to my knowledge, doesn't try to call a foetus a human being, that's too much for too many people to believe. They settle for potential human being. My point is simply that there is an awful lot of human cellular material on this globe which can fall under the definition of 'potential human being and that to grant it all civil rights on this basis would be absurd. While I agree that a foetus is a potential human being, it must be realised that that I am a potential MP. Is that reason enough to give me voting rights in Parliament?
I maintain that the noun human being means more - a damned sight more - than a collection of chromosomes. The question of defining what a human is remains contentious in many circles. I continue to find it absurd to claim that this collection of chromosomes which is a potential human being should have rights which pre-empt those of its parents.
I suspect that the motivation behind most anti abortion activity and sentiment is not so much a concern for human rights as it is an ill- disguised prudity best summed up by SPUC's own slogan "cross your legs, not your fingers."
In Medieval times children were largely an unavoidable result of sexual intercourse. This had a tremendous limiting effect on women. In today's word we have contraceptives and as a last resort abortion which enable women to excercise some degree of choice about childbearing, and I cannot think of a more important decision in life than that regarding the bearing of children.
The desire on the part of some to prevent the use of contraceptives and abortion is merely an effort to return to medieval bondage. It is extraordinarily sexist and dicriminatory towards women. It further leads to an increase in unwanted children and a whole host of social problems which follow from that. I much prefer the notion 'Every child a wanted child' to the 'cross your legs, not your fingers'. — typstr)